Healthcare reform opponents singing an old song

[barfo]

I thought this was an interesting column from Nicholas Kristof. It's a look back at conservative objections to the formation of Medicare in the 60s, and Social Security in the 30s.

It gives some useful context to the objections to healthcare reform that we hear this year, because according to the opponents, both of those programs were going to turn America socialist, destroy our freedom, and set us all on the Road to Serfdom.

Critics storm that health care reform is “a cruel hoax and a delusion.” Ads in 100 newspapers thunder that reform would mean “the beginning of socialized medicine.”

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page predicts that the legislation will lead to “deteriorating service.” Business groups warn that Washington bureaucrats will invade “the privacy of the examination room,” that we are on the road to rationed care and that patients will lose the “freedom to choose their own doctor.”

All dire — but also wrong. Those forecasts date not from this year, but from the battle over Medicare in the early 1960s. I pulled them from newspaper archives and other accounts.

The Wall Street Journal warned darkly in editorials in 1965 that Medicare amounted to “politicking with a nation’s health.” It quoted a British surgeon as saying that in Britain, government health care was “crumbling to utter ruin” and suggested that the United States might be heading in the same direction.

Daniel Reed, a Republican representative from New York, predicted that with Social Security, Americans would come to feel “the lash of the dictator.” Senator Daniel Hastings, a Delaware Republican, declared that Social Security would “end the progress of a great country.”

John Taber, a Republican representative from New York, went further and said of Social Security: “Never in the history of the world has any measure been brought here so insidiously designed as to prevent business recovery, to enslave workers.”

It all sounds rather familiar, doesn't it?

barfo

 

[jlprk]

Lyndon Johnson was scorned in the 60s in the print media. (I've since noticed that every Democratic president gets the same media treatment, especially in the second 2 years of his term, aimed at influencing the elections. And before Johnson, Truman got the same.) But in retrospect, Johnson did great things, except for the War--Medicare, the moon trip, and several big pieces of legislation about black people.

The last time I remember Republicans unifying to not give a Democratic measure one single Republican vote, it was at the start of the Clinton administration. Clinton was reversing the giant tax cuts for the rich that were legislated in the Reagan years. The Democrats won, despite Republicans unanimously voting no. That additional revenue caused the miraculous surpluses of the second Clinton term.

In the future, will Democrats remind voters of the Republican unanimous opposition to the most popular programs of the government, i.e. S.S., Medicare, and health care? Of course not. Democrats have no idea how to fight to win elections.

 

[BLAZER PROPHET]

In the vote to pass the legislation creating social security in 1935, the vote was as follows:

House Vote

Democrats/Progressive/Farm Labor: Yes 291 No 18
Republicans: Yes 81 No 15

Senate Vote

Democrats/Farm Labor: Yes 61 No 1
Republicans: Yes 16 No 5

You're right barfo, the republicans were in strong opposition all right.

Here is a factual and excellent read on compulsory health care in this country by a liberal institution- The Cato Institute: http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj16n3-3.html

Some quotes:

Medicare's passage was achieved through government officials' deliberate decisions to restructure political transaction costs to overcome the widespread public opposition which had prevented passage of such bills for more than 50 years. History shows that Medicare did not and could not achieve passage without the misrepresentation, cost concealment, tying, and incrementalism to which its supporters ultimately resorted

For decades Medicare payroll taxes have required low-income workers to subsidize medical care for more affluent retirees, while individuals as consumers of medical services increasingly have been constrained by a web of government controls

Anyway, a good read on all this by a very honest liberal organization.

 

[barfo]

Here is a factual and excellent read on compulsory health care in this country by a liberal institution- The Cato Institute:

Uhm, no. The Cato Institute is libertarian, not liberal. Libertarians and liberals are not the same thing.

Anyway, a good read on all this by a very honest liberal organization.

More like, a very slanted read by an organization with an axe to grind.

barfo

 

[yakbladder]

umm...yeah.

What are you thinking BP?

 

[jlprk]

Cato always puts out conservative stuff. It's news to me that they hide under the libertarian label.

There may have been more than one vote about Social Security. I don't know whether the 1935 votes you cite were the only ones. Often a legislature's final vote is like the final vote at a party's convention. The straw votes are full of conflict but determine the winner, then in the vote we see, the opponents unify around the guy they know will win.

Another point is that conservatives acquiesced during the Depression to liberal measures because the alternative was a Communist revolution. Roosevelt may have been mildly socialist, but his half-measures prevented a much bigger change.

 

[maxiep]

Cato always puts out conservative stuff. It's news to me that they hide under the libertarian label.

That's terribly misinformed. They're a temple of Libertarianism. Perhaps you're confusing them with Heritage.

 

[jlprk]

What does Cato oppose that is conservative? As I said, I see them opposing only liberal things. They may claim to have a different motive, but the end product is conservative.

 

[maxiep]

What does Cato oppose that is conservative? As I said, I see them opposing only liberal things. They may claim to have a different motive, but the end product is conservative.

Their motto is "Individual Liberty, Free Markets and Peace". While there is a significant overlay between conservatism and libertarianism, they disagree on a few issues.

Read this page: http://www.cato.org/about.php